


Foxhole

by gwinny3k (lesshoney)



Category: Chernobyl (HBO)
Genre: M/M, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 10:20:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18990718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesshoney/pseuds/gwinny3k
Summary: It's not a missing scene so much as a wished-for scene for 1x03.





	Foxhole

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hotaru_Tomoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hotaru_Tomoe/gifts).



> This has nothing to do with any real persons, living or dead.

MAY 7, 1986  
00:00 Hours

The hotel on the square, 2km from the reactor. Valery was nervously chewing his pencil in the conference room. He and Boris had made this a place to fall back to in the dark hours, where the work could continue. He didn’t need much sleep. 

At least that was what he told himself, as he shoved his finger and thumb into his eyeballs and tried to rub his blurry vision clear. 

The door opened almost noiselessly, and in sauntered Boris. Like Valery, he still had a set of AF fatigues on. He didn’t seem tired. Valery wondered how he managed.

Boris held the papers in his hand aloft. “The midnight report - they’ll be finished grading the mouth of the tunnel within the hour. Six more braces in place. There’ll be another report at dawn, before we leave for Moscow.” 

Valery nodded, not looking up at him. 

Boris cast an eye across the conference table and his wayward colleague. Their trailers at the work site were bare bones, but this room here at the hotel had quickly become something chaotic. Valery was rubbing his face again, his temples.

Boris dropped the foreman’s report. “We need to go over your notes for tomorrow. Come with me. Bring your papers.”

Valery listed over slowly, then seemed to snap out of it. He grabbed up his attache case and an armload and followed Boris, already at the door. Security fell in behind them. 

They stepped off the lift at the executive suites. Boris glanced back over his shoulder at the soldiers. “No interruptions.”

They walked on, leaving the soldiers flanking the lift. 

Boris passed his room. He took a sharp left down a branching hallway, past the suites for visiting party officials, through the fire doors at the end of the service corridor, and back down two flights of stairs. Valery managed to keep up with his strides, but he was huffing by the time they reached the dim hallway on the unfamiliar floor. A cleaning cart still stood in the middle of the hall, abandoned with a bucket of greyish water that smelled strongly of solvent. Boris stopped here and grabbed a set of keys from among the towels and brushes. He used them to open one of the doors on the exterior side of the hotel, and gestured Valery in. 

“What is this?” Valery asked. This was the first chance he’d had to ask a question. He stepped across the threshold and Boris closed the door behind them. “Why here?”

“I can’t think in the work room.” Boris looked pointedly at Valery as he switched on a small desk lamp. “It’s too messy.” 

Valery took the swipe with his chin held high, moved into the room, and promptly tripped on his own feet, sending the papers in his arms and unlatched briefcase in a cascade across the carpet.

With a sigh, Valery bent to gather up his precious, doomed printouts and scribbled notes. 

Boris stared at him for a long moment, unblinking. 

Then Boris went to the window. Even from here, he could see the glow of the work lights at the site, and the shadow of the monster crouched low on the horizon. He took the curtains in each hand and drew them together in one roll of his arms. 

“That won’t help protect us,” Valery said, who finally had his papers together, and was clutching his briefcase. “But… it can’t hurt.” 

Boris turned back to him. The curtains were for privacy, but he had been considering the radiation question too, it was true. Boris snorted at himself. “I don’t believe in ghosts, but this radiation seems like a Fury, doesn’t it?”

“Fury?” Valery asked distractedly. 

Boris glanced at him. As usual, the man’s mind was half elsewhere, tumbling through private anxieties. 

“A Fury,” Boris said again. “The Erinyes. Vindictive and out for blood.” 

Valery was still hardly listening. He had crept to the rust-colored sofa and dropped on it heavily, his back to the windows.

“Just something I read once,” Boris muttered. He shrugged out of his army jacket, paring down to his shirtsleeves and tie. He started a new line of rumination, at normal volume. “Makes a man want to fuck. And fuck, and fuck, and fuck. Fuck until a woman gives him a baby. Make sure life goes on. I might have to bring a woman here.” 

The vulgarity, at least, seemed to get through to Valery. He raised his face to Boris with a faint brow-wrinkle of disgust. 

Boris flicked his eyebrows at him. He loosened his tie with two finger. “Do you have any children?”

Valery shook his head.

“What about a girl?” Boris knew there was no wife; he had a copy of Valery’s records in his room. “You should send for your most beautiful mistress, and bring her.”

“In a lead-lined fur coat, I assume,” Valery said, dismissively. He put the stack of papers on the carpet, and opened his notebook to coffee-stained, pencil-covered pages. “Are we going to work on my statement? If you want me to stick to a _script_ , we’d better write it.”

Such insolence. Boris felt his power like a physical thing inside him, an urge to make a fist. How dare you speak to us that way. 

But Boris’s impulse was tempered with amusement, and pity, and a twinge of respect. He took a seat beside Valery and looked at the open notebook on his knee. “Give that here.” 

Valery handed it over. Boris took a pen from his pocket. His pale eyes flickered back and forth across the pages as he crossed out sentence after sentence. He worked silently, methodically, crossing out, blocking off, until he reached the bitter end. When he was through, strong blue ink strokes across Valery’s lighter, shakier pencil marks, there wasn’t much left. 

Boris handed the notebook back. “You can’t say any of that. Not to these men. Try again.”

Valery shot him a venomous look, tore out the pages, and started again. 

Good boy, Boris thought, watching Valery’s neck crane and his pencil scrawl. He lapsed into quiet, wishing he had a drink. He contented himself with watching Valery, the mad little strand of hair on his forehead, weariness and determination dug in to the trenches around his mouth and cloudy, red-rimmed eyes. His cheeks and forehead had a slight radiation blush but his hands were still bloodless, porcelain white. They were trembling. His lips were cracked. This man was like a forgotten cup of tea, Boris thought. Luke-warm and half-full. He wondered about the last time someone had touched him. 

Boris primly unfastened his cuffs. He rolled his sleeves back, baring his forearms.

Valery finally stopped writing. He came up ready for a fight. “ _Here_. What do you think of -” He had his pencil in one hand, notebook in the other. 

He stopped when he saw the expression on Boris’s face. “What?”

Boris reached under his outspread arms to grasp Valery’s belt. 

Valery froze.

Boris’s other hand joined the first, to slide the buckle open and pull the leather apart. He unzipped the fly of Valery’s fatigues, as casually as if he were buttoning a child’s coat on a winter day. 

“You were saying?” Boris asked, with perfect, uninflected politeness. 

Valery’s fingers convulsed around the pencil and book, crumpling the pages into his hand nervously. “What -”

The time had come for Boris to explain himself, if he cared to. If he could. Some things were inexplicable, intrinsic to him, and there was no logic to explain. He couldn’t explain the way Valery wrung gentleness out of him, despite his poise and his importance. He couldn’t explain why this didn’t disgust him, as he knew it should.

He could explain his immediate thinking, however. “You’re inefficient, Valery. You’re going to work yourself to death before the reactor has a chance to do it.” 

His hand had breached Valery’s zip and was exploring gently, past his cotton briefs, coming to rest with Valery cupped in the palm of his hand. He curled his fingers and gauged the weight of him. 

Valery looked terrified, assuming this was a test, or worse. “I’m not… I swear. I don’t want…” 

Boris’s look was omniscient.“They gave me your file. I know about the indiscretion at the academy. You did well, keeping yourself out of trouble afterward.” Boris was stroking him, rolling him. “I won’t let you get hurt.”

“They’ll hear,” Valery choked out. 

“They won’t have had time to bug this room,” Boris explained. How loud do you get? He thought wryly. He was watching Valery closely. 

Valery, for his part, started filling, getting thicker under the heat of Boris’s palm and the inhumanly impassive expression on Boris’s face. 

“Is this required of me?” Valery asked, helplessly owlish behind his glasses, awkward from his thin strawberry hair to his toes. 

“No,” Boris said. “You can leave. This isn’t, hm, Party business. It’s nothing at all.” With his hand wrapped around Valery’s now flushed and half-standing cock, his knuckles rudely jammed into Valery’s underwear, jostling his balls with every cunning iron of his thumb up the underside. “But I would prefer,” Boris said coolly, “If you stayed.”

Valery’s chin quivered. He slouched back against the cushion, defeated, nodding rapidly. The jacket he was wearing was a size or three too large, and so was the shirt beneath it (is that one of mine? Boris thought fleetingly). They bunched up around Valery’s shoulders and gaped at his unbuttoned collar, where the pulse was fluttering in his smooth white throat. Boris noted it with the eye of a predator. This nebbishy awkward professor was out of step with the pack, lagging, dreaming, staring stupidly at things he didn’t understand - like Boris - and making himself, well, a target. Boris had no choice, Valery had roused his hunting blood.

And yet there was more to him. Boris had known a hundred weak, incompetent, outcast men. He would have no interest if that were all that Valery was. Boris would have ignored him, or ruined him, whichever pleased him most. Like those rats, Bryukhov and Fomin, who Boris fantasized about drowning in a bucket.

No. Valery wasn’t weak, and he certainly wasn’t incompetent. He wasn’t merely socially inept, either. He was… naive. He had been in his lab, ignoring the material realities, the frictious current of world affairs that was slowly wearing down the edifice of all they had once held dear. 

Valery didn’t appreciate the stone smiths, like Boris, trying to stop the erosion. The Party had its soft rotten parts, its embezzlers and morons, but Boris had made a career of turning sleeping land into fiery oil fields, snaking gas lines, of hammering and blasting progress onto the face of the unsuspecting Earth for the good of the Union and the good of the people. He had done it with a strong hand, a head for strategy, a respect for order, and the secrecy that made it possible. He was proud of his work. 

But there was a change in the air - you didn’t need the view from the pinnacle, the Central Committee, to see it. He could certainly see it here on the ground, in the shadow of the reactor. Whispers, dissatisfaction, whinging - and cowards. Boris was here to take things in hand, and if it upset Valery that Boris refused to make the dysfunction and disorganization worse by inciting gossip and panic, he was a short-sighted fool. Those things would be the death of them all. Let the system weather enough, let their failings and weaknesses out into the sunlight for all the world to see, and there would be nothing left. People like Valery, brilliant but unsound, would be made orphans. 

What will you do, Valera, when there aren’t men like me to protect you?

He was on his knees in front of Valery before Valery could stop him - on his knees, caging Valery’s thighs with his elbows, ducking his face to Valery’s lap. He got Valery out, pink and round like his face, and bent forward and tasted him with the flat of his tongue. 

Valery swore, distinctly. Loudly. Boris was glad he had found them this foxhole.

Then it got quiet, eerily silent without noises from the street. Breath, the rustle of clothing, the springs on the sofa as Boris got a better foothold, lips leaving wet on flesh. Boris wasn’t the sort of man who teased, but after a minute, two minutes, three minutes of what would have brought any other touch-starved man off in a rush, Valery was still rising and softening in waves, his breath was catching with every intake. 

Boris’s knees could only take so much. He looked up, a little frustrated. “Try a little harder, will you?” Boris said. “Enjoy yourself.” 

Valery blinked down at him. His mouth hung open, then tried to form a question. 

Boris really did have to do everything around here. He pushed Valery’s trouser leg upward to give him more bare skin and squeezed the back of Valery’s left knee, strumming the delicate nerves there with his nails. He got hold of Valery’s skinny calf and draped his leg up over his shoulder. He dragged Valery’s legs down the sofa, hitching them up. That was easier on his neck, and it let him get a hand under Valery, inside his roomy, ill-fitting fatigues hanging halfway off his hips. Boris traced the vein that stood out like an electric fence, and follow it to the soft place between his thighs. Boris stroked with his knuckles, easing him into the sensation while he exhaled warmly across Valery’s balls. He nuzzled Valery’s lower belly, and formed two fingers to a point. He pressed in hard, from behind his cock, in a smooth furrow backwards. Valery almost thrashed off the sofa. 

Boris stopped on that spot as Valery tensed from head to foot. It was new to him, Boris realized, and he took his mouth off him. “Trust me. Feels like you’ll piss yourself, but it’ll pass. Just feel it.” 

Back to doing what he was doing. Exploring Valery, the edges of soft skin and biting zipper, the musky odor of testosterone and a man’s arousal. The smell of sweat got stronger as Valery throbbed and got full-hard. This was where it became art, Boris always thought. Tongue tracing, tracing, around the crown of the well-exposed head. Then the underside, that V and the taut little bridge of tissue, crossed and teased. Boris took him in and sucked, once, as deep as he could. 

Boris kept the pressure between Valery’s legs, making small circles. Valery was twitching, his stomach muscles were drawing in and releasing, his thighs kept tensing either side of Boris’s head.

Valery made a strangled sound. He had pressed the side of his thumb against his lips to muffle himself. His balls were tight and in a moment Boris knew he’d feel them tremor and spasm. Boris felt that particular thrill of knowing he could bring it all to a stop. Valery was almost at the moment of no return, and Boris could leave him there, suspended in hell. If he had liked Valery less, he might have - stopped right here, taken away his mouth and hands and let Valery suffer. Maybe later, Boris thought. For now, he was on a mission.

It was quick when it happened, scant, and Boris spat into his kerchief. He rested his head on Valery’s inner thigh for a moment, let his warm breath wash over him so the wetness left by his mouth wouldn’t get chilly. He stroked Valery’s leg like a beloved dog, comfortingly, then let Valery’s leg slip off his shoulder bonelessly. 

Boris rose from his knees more stiffly than he cared to admit - damn the thin carpets and damn age, anyway. He levered himself onto the sofa beside Valery.

Boris was conscientious, wiping Valery off before tucking him back into his trousers, yanking the zipper back into place. He wiped his own hands, dabbed at his chin, and folded up his handkerchief. He tucked it neatly in his shirt pocket. 

Valery breathed shakily. He might have been crying.

Boris threw an arm around Valery’s shoulders and Valery folded up against him. Folded - Boris had never seen such a house of cards, such a pulley system of limbs and joints. One moment he was all elbows and knees, the next he was tight against Boris’s side, tucked under his arm, dwarfed. 

Valery’s hand went cautiously to the crease of Boris’s fatigues. 

Boris grasped his wrist, diverted his hand. “No,” he said roughly. He kept hold of the wrist for a moment. Then he set Valery’s hand on his knee.

“Don’t you want anything?” Valery murmured. 

Boris looked down at Valery, his half-lidded eyes, the strand of hair falling across his forehead, as strange and out of place as the rest of him. He cracked a smile, creaky from lack of use, and shook his head. “No.”

Valery’s breathing had come back to normal, and the awkwardness that had melted in his moment of fission was creeping back over him. He seemed torn; what would be worse? Running away, or staying right like this? He tucked his cheek against Boris’s shoulder. In the next moment, Boris felt hot tears start to spot his collar. 

“Strength, Valera,” Boris said, resting a steadying hand over Valery’s.

“You’re a good man,” Valery said. 

Boris wouldn’t ordinarily accept this naive man’s estimation of anything, but that pleased him. He wasn’t the enemy here. It was high time Valery understood that. “Go to sleep.”

When he was sure Valery was asleep, snoring softly, Boris light up a cigarette. He retrieved the forgotten notebook and well-chewed pencil and read through Valery’s second attempt at being respectful, diplomatic, accurate. 

He didn’t understand, you could only pick two. 

Boris turned the page again, and started to write.


End file.
